“I’m not so sure about the luck in your case, Berry,” he said generously. “I’m afraid there’s always been far too much of it with me. I’m not a hard worker. And as for thinking, it happens in wedges of intuition driven in between sleeping and waking. I have damn little to do with it. That’s why I’m up a tree now. I haven’t had a good sleep since the returns on these murders of ours began to come in.”
“You don’t look it. And unless I miss my guess we’ve got a bad night ahead of us. So let’s run over our lists to date and not leave the household too long on its wild lone. Who are there to be considered? Mr. and Mrs. Crawford; Prentice and his girl-friend; Miss Mdevani; and this missing Dorn. And that leaves out of account the quite possible possibility that Blake killed Miss Video, or vice versa, or that Whittaker killed both. Violet Mowbray’s name may be a stepping-stone and it may prove just another stumbling-block. What really interested me in Miss Video’s remark was the ‘revelation for revelation’ bit. Did she mean that because Whittaker was exposing her lover Crawford she was going to pay him off? For what she could have meant was that if you are exposing me I’ll get even with a story about you and Violet Mowbray. In which case it would bear out a little suspicion of mine about that Diary you people seem so anxious to forget. Perhaps the Diary had ’em all in it—not merely Crawford. Whittaker may have been letting fifty-nine cats out of the bag instead of one. He was an old scoundrel, Whittaker, by accounts. If that was so, with most of those here having interrelated parts, what more likely than the only way for any one of them to come clean was to wipe out every other one, and the Diary with ’em.”
Belknap carefully regarded a thumb-nail, pausing before he spoke.
“Astute reasoning, Berry. You’re uncannily warm, you’ll be pleased to know. I haven’t had a good opportunity to explain to you the method in this madness, if there is any. Such as it is, it’s Whittaker’s. The poor devil, though I swear I can’t be as sympathetic as I should be, was dying of cancer, and witness his bright idea of a way to shorten the sentence. He called me in at the last minute to watch it done—too late to more than expostulate and then resign myself to what I thought was going to be rather a gruesome lark, and has proved far too much of a good thing. I assure you I didn’t anticipate a shambles! I’ve kept this item for your ear alone because—well, you know the police. Can’t you picture that damned sergeant hot and bothered on the trail of a lot of stale crimes when the time is too short for the new? What do you say about it?”
Berry walked across and threw up a window. “Bad night,” he said, and spit. He knocked the ashes from his pipe on the stone outer sill, closed the window deliberately, and came a few steps back, refilling his pipe as he came, and keeping his eyes on that.
“You’ve let me do quite a bit of feeling around in the dark, haven’t you, boy? Oh, I don’t exactly blame you. After all, it was your case, not mine. There’s a catch-as-catch-can element between us I guess we can’t avoid. And aside from that I agree with you that it would be rather low-down to allow your friend the Judge to blight the careers of his criminal friends because of certain age-old professional secrets between them. For I take it that’s what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I am, exactly. But now that you are enlightened what good is it to you? It’s been of little help to me to know that the Miss Laceys and Mr. Prentices have their pasts. Can you see either one of them with any of last night’s blood on their hands?”
“Not particularly. But we’ve both had our tragic experiences with gentle creatures who have spread the veil of innocence over a positive welter of sin. No, given your tale of what Whittaker had set out to do, and has done to a T, the matter boils itself down to a neat psychological one. We’re unable to budge with the circumstantial evidence; unless the fact that all the circumstantial points directly at your foreign lady, Miss Mdevani. But I, for one, feel it’s planted on her. I gather it strikes you the same way? However, we can’t afford to eliminate her. As far as everyone is concerned we only have their sworn word as to how they spent last night: Miss Lacey in Mr. Prentice’s room, for the most part; Mr. Prentice in the Judge’s, except when he wasn’t; the Judge in Miss Video’s, you think; Mrs. Crawford in her own; Miss Mdevani very much out and about—and yet not seen until her visit to you; Mr. Crawford further out and about but not seen because of the assignation with his wops. The few instances in which we can check their stories we find them quite uncommonly truthful. You saw Miss Lacey when she says she came to the library for a drink. Mrs. Crawford saw Mr. Prentice as he came from the Judge’s room, when she was on her way down to find her husband and found Blake instead. No one saw Blake. You kept moving and saw damn little—unless you did see Dorn. I wasn’t in the picture until after two of the important episodes, and too far afield to get much out of the third. You were actually present at the third, and a lot of good it did you. Which reminds me. I just want to check that shooting with you again. It bothers me. One shot, you say, from the direction of the library wall, in other words from the holes therein. Prentice does insist on two.”
“There was one shot,” Belknap said with controlled quietness. “I should think it would be unnecessary for me to repeat myself. But there have been cases of simultaneous, or all but simultaneous, shots that might deceive one, more particularly the person nearest the scene of action. Do you suggest it might have been something of that sort? Miss Mdevani in the wall, and Crawford or his hired man in the pantry, shall we say?”
“My idea in a nutshell. You see this is what I found to make me such a nuisance on the subject.”